The pasteurizing of products, and in this case in particular beverages or other foodstuffs, for effectively killing off germs and/or micro organisms harmful to products, is known. In this case, the respective product is heated to a pasteurization temperature, for example within the range of 70 to 80°, preferably within the range of 72 to 75°, and is held for the duration of a treatment period, which can also be called a required heat holding period, at the pasteurization temperature, such that, among other things, the germs and/or micro organisms that are harmful to products are effectively killed off as required during said treatment or heat holding time. After the treatment, the product is cooled back down and can then be supplied as a sterile product to a further treatment, for example to a filling machine to be filled into bottles or similar containers.
In the case of conventional pasteurization systems known to date, the necessary heat holding time at constant product throughput of the product to be pasteurized is achieved by establishing a corresponding tubular section in which the pasteurization temperature is maintained. A disadvantage in this case is, however, that the actual treatment or heat holding time alters in dependence on the product throughput, i.e. on the flow rate of the product per unit time (for example in m3/h) and, consequently, a system has to be designed such that the necessary required heat holding time is still maintained even with the largest possible product throughput. In the case of smaller product throughputs, this leads forcibly to a considerable extension to the treatment or heat holding time, i.e. to over-pasteurization and consequently to a considerable strain and to a considerable impairment of the quality of the respective product.
Changes to the product throughput can be caused by various reasons, for example such changes are caused by a change in the performance of a filling machine connected downstream of the pasteurization system or are also caused by the fact that containers of different types and sizes for different products are processed by one and the same system etc.
Attempts have already been made to equalize changes in the product throughput by interposing buffer storage between the pasteurization system and a filling machine connected downstream and to counter over-pasteurization; these attempts, however, have only had very restricted success in practice, among other things because it has not been possible to increase the volume of the buffer storage arbitrarily for reasons of economy and space.